Award winning long arm quilter, textile artist and all round fabricator. I mostly work on textile art, but I can also be found repairing ballistic jackets and building fences.

Friday, February 22, 2008

It's alive!

I realised today my show has taken on a\life of it's own. Well actually it's stolen mine, I just hope it gives it back at some point. It is, I suppose, a positive thing. The fact that I am getting so many contacts about it suggests that word is getting about, and I am thrilled by that. On the other hand every day I seem to find more things I have to do for it, and I really feel like I am running out of time now. I don't need more jobs to do.

On the other hand I was very pleased to be contacted by a local paper (see press releases can work) and I wouldn't have changed it for the world. It would have been nice if someone else could have done the photo shoot while I got on with some work :) I have learned a lot already from this experience, and I suspect I have more to come.

Back in October I wrote Planning a Show a collection of advice I was given to help get a show together. It's certainly proved to be good advice. I have a few extra points to note.

Press Releases - these are harder to write that I had imagined. I needed a lot of help with mine. So find someone to bounce ideas off and give a different point of view.

Don't plan a show with less than 6 months lead time. Really, it's not long enough. OK I suspect no length of time is really long enough, but many publications want your show dates 6 months in advance, so they will not print your event if it is sooner. That can mean loosing a lot of potential publicity. Also people need to hear about an event several times before it really sinks in that they want to go, and that takes time.

Publicity - around here the optimum time to contact people seems to be about a month before the event. So all printing needs to be done before then. That in turn means the design and planning must all be done before then.

Get help. Any help anytime. I am now realising that if I had asked for more help with things like addressing envelopes and finding addresses I wouldn't be feeling so fried now. At the time I was happy to do the work myself now I suspect I would be better off if I hadn't.

Order your guest book sooner rather than later. I assumed that getting a guest book would be easy. It turned out to be harder than I expected at a time when I really didn't need the extra stress.

Write down every piece of advice, every lead and every contact. Try and make the notes clear enough that other people can understand them too. I have been amazed by the support and leads I have been given. I haven't managed to follow them all up, but I have them all written down and I will use them next time if not this one.

Keep reminding people about all dates your show is open, and encourage people to come on different days.

Look for and record all the positive things you get from the show, even those that come up before the show.

New contacts

New venues suggested

New publications found

New routes to sell work

New friends

Try to take time off to relax.

Keep enjoying your art.

I have to admit I am not quite managing to follow all the advice. I have several people I would like to get in touch with before my opening, but I think I am just going to have to accept I can't do everything. I have however finally got the details of the Monday events up on my website.

On the exciting and low stress side, I got the proofs of my giclee prints. They are much more effective that I had expected. I wasn't sure about prints of textiles, but it does seem to work. I am really pleased that this at least seems to be going roughly to plan.